As SEO experts, we receive many different questions about our services. We often hear ‘what are the benefits of SEO?’ or ‘what is a backlink?’

We know that there are many benefits of SEO for your business and that’s why we’re passionate about what we do. It’s also why we’ve complied this handy guide to demystify common terms and answer your frequently asked questions about SEO for your business.

If you’re new to SEO or need a quick recap, take a look at our Beginner’s Guide.

SEO is vital for your business as it allows your website to be found in search engines such as Google. Without it, it is exceedingly difficult to find new customers and showcase your product to your target audience.

When was the last time you scrolled down to page 2 or 3 of Google to find the best result for your search? The top results in Google attract the most traffic, clicks and conversions. If your business is on the first page of Google for your relevant services, your brand immediately earns trust and credibility as it is deemed the best match to the searcher’s intent.

An effective SEO strategy requires continuous improvement and optimisation in many different aspects of your webpages. Search engines look at the overall quality of your site to determine where to place you in search results.

As a result, SEO requires frequent assessment of content, user experience and the latest strategies to determine your overall ranking.

SEO helps your business to establish a strong online presence, raise your brand awareness and drive engaged visitors to your site. SEO can also help you attract local customers or promote your services nationwide – it is one of the most effective online marketing tools that will get your website found and provide consistent leads.

SEO is a long-term strategy.

Effective, long-lasting SEO results take patience, perseverance, and specialist knowledge to achieve – but it’s worth the wait!

Search engine algorithms use over 200 different ranking factors to determine the quality of your website in relation to SEO and it can take some time for your site changes to be indexed.

As a result, it can take up to 1 year to see results depending on how competitive your chosen keywords are.

Keyword research is where you identify the ideal search terms or phrases that your business would ideally rank for, based on competitors, location and search volume. The next task is to create quality content that include those keywords so that search engines will begin to recognise that your webpage is matching the user’s search terms.

A quick research will give you an idea of who ranks highly for which keywords and you can use this information to develop your own content. However, if you would like in-depth statistics including search volume, there are several tools you can use such as SEMrush.

Page 2 of Google is a good result, particularly for a competitive keyword with lots of search volume.

However, to really see results from your search engine rankings, the first page is the best place to be as the top 3 results gain 75% of all clicks. To appear on the first page of Google results, you need to identify keywords that your site can realistically rank for; this could mean targeting local customers or identifying niche keywords that get a high search volume.

A backlink is simply when a website links back to your site. For example, your website earns a backlink when another website includes a link to your site.

Backlinks are a crucial part of the SEO process as they consolidate all your hard work to achieve top-ranking results. A backlink from a high authority website indicates to Google that your webpage contains quality content. The more backlinks your page receives, the more authority your webpage or site receives and the more likely it is to rank high in Google and receive lots of valuable traffic.

There are many different ways to build backlinks to your site. It is important to take the time to build high quality links, rather than sign up to sites that promise quick link building as it can have a negative impact on your page rankings.

To build high quality backlinks, we recommend that you:

• Create shareable content, for example, a blog or news article
• Create profiles for your business on local or industry directories
• Publish an online press release
• Network with businesses and consumers; get involved in industry events and online campaigns.

Anchor text is the text that describes a link. For instance, the following link: SEO Leeds contains a link to our SEO service page and ‘SEO Leeds’ is the anchor text. Anchor text can help you gain the benefits of SEO if the anchor text matches the keyword you want the linked page to rank for.

A do-follow link passes authority (also known as ‘link juice’) from a website to another site it links to. For example, a link to your site from a high authority website like BBC News would be extremely beneficial to your SEO.

However, a no-follow link is a link from a site that does not pass on any authority such as social media sites or sites that have chosen to make their links ‘no follow’ in order to reduce spam comments or abuse of the SEO system. It is important to earn a natural mix of the 2 link types.

A website’s Domain Authority is a number out of 100 that ranks your site on its ability to rank for keywords. Sites with a high Domain Authority are identified as providing valuable content of high quality to users and is thus more likely to rank for more competitive keywords compared to a website with a low domain rating.

Check the authority of your website with Ahrefs site explorer tool.

On-Page SEO is optimisation of individual webpages. It includes content creation such as blogs and service pages, HTML and providing a good user experience that is both engaging and informative.

Off-Page SEO is concerned with optimising for SEO outside of your website. This includes backlink building, blogger outreach and social media. It’s all about driving traffic to your site in order to earn it credibility.

A valid SSL certificate ensures encryption of sensitive information; up to 85% of people will not continue browsing if a site is not secure. It is vital for your business website to protect your customer’s personal details, especially if your website has options for newsletter signups or online purchases.

An SSL certificate earns your visitor’s trust and shows Google that you are a credible site that deserves its place in search engine rankings.

We’ve given you a quick overview of the benefits of SEO and helped define some of the commonly asked questions we hear about SEO. However, we’ve only just scratched the surface.

Got a question about SEO? Need some advice?

Get in touch!